Pooja Diagnostic Laboratory Mulund, Mumbai, India
Modern-day India is unrecognizable from the country that existed when the Pooja Laboratory was founded in 1987 and the two have developed in parallel. What started life as a small in-house service to the Pooja Nursing Home has since expanded into a major, independent diagnostic laboratory serving a very large population and operating in a complex environment of a mixed public/private healthcare system. The laboratory now has a long-term, loyal customer base, including all the major hospitals in the surrounding area. During the Pooja s expansion, the relationship with Roche steadily grew and the trust that was established made it easy for them to accept the offer of a cobas c 111 analyzer as a backup for their COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus instrument.
Pooja Diagnostic Laboratory, Mulund, Mumbai, India Independent Diagnostic Laboratory 292,000 Clinical Chemistry results per year
Meeting the challenges of a dynamic, rapidly growing population Dr Raghavendra is a full time pathologist at the Pooja and he represents some of the qualities that set this laboratory apart: very few others can call on such a level of in-house expertise. But the laboratory needs to stay ahead of its competitors in other ways too, as he explains: More and more of these labs are springing up in this area resulting in an inter-lab competition and our throughput time has to be better than the rest. Patients expect quick results so naturally we need instruments that can meet this demand: that means systems with both fast turnaround time and accuracy. Mr Prandesh Chandarana, the microbiologist who started the Pooja Laboratory, recognized this, but he also saw the bigger picture. He knew that as the population continued to expand and demographics changed, it was important to train and develop leaders across all the key disciplines of the modern diagnostic laboratory: clinical chemistry, immunology, pathology and microbiology.
Without doubt, Roche has given us the confidence to build our service offering and to help us stand out against our local competitors.
Reliability and accuracy that breeds trust and confidence Confidence is important in the context of the local community because despite the rapidly growing population, public funding for health services is difficult to access. So the laboratory s clients need to know that their money is not being wasted by inefficiency or inaccuracy. With the help of the cobas c 111 analyzer, the Pooja Laboratory is able to offer this reassurance. There are many reasons why the cobas c 111 analyzer enhances reliability and sometimes these can appear quite minor, but in certain situations they can make a major difference. Take, for example, the independent water supply. As described by Bhavika Chheda, a Laboratory Microbiologist at the Pooja Laboratory: The fact that the instrument has an independent water supply container is a major plus point. Contamination risks are greatly reduced and even the air in the plumbing, which would otherwise come up in the pathway, that s all excluded. It all means that the reproducibility of the results increases and the quality of the reports is improved. Local hospitals and physicians have come to recognise this and over the past six years of using the cobas c 111 analyzer, the Pooja has become the go-to laboratory as the reputation of the service it provides has continued to grow.
Reliability has never been in doubt and we have been using the instrument for almost six years now. Certainly it is comparable to the COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus analyzer across all of the parameters we use.
Easy to adopt, easy to train The cobas c 111 analyzer may be the smallest member of the Serum Work Area family, but it retains a high level of sophistication and complex capability all combined with ease of use. For the Pooja, who already saw themselves as part of the Roche family thanks to their earlier use of cobas MIRA, introducing the cobas c 111 analyzer as a the backup analyzer for their COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus was a simple decision to make. Dr Raghavendra knew that the cobas c 111 analyzer couldn t be considered as the main instrument for a medium-sized lab like theirs, but recognized that its profile was perfect for the back-up role and he clearly remembers the time when it was introduced: We are very familiar with Roche support staff and engineers so we didn t really have any concerns about adopting the cobas c 111 analyzer. We were right not to be concerned because it was very straightforward. We didn t find it at all difficult to adjust to the new instrument just one or two days training at most and we were already using the machine.
The COBAS INTEGRA 400 plus and the cobas c 111 analyzer as backup machine, does help us to manage our workload.
A partnership that fuels and fulfils ambition Because the cobas c 111 analyzer fitted so easily into the day to day routine of the laboratory, it meant that attention and focus wasn t diverted away from other pressing matters - like the Quality Assurance Programme that is so important for the Pooja in order to maintain and expand their level of service. They are currently in the advanced stages of NABL certification (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories), which would be an important formal recognition of their competence and would signify their membership of a global community of accredited laboratories. In India, this is a real distinction and sets the Pooja apart from most of its competitors: of all the laboratories across the country, there are perhaps fewer than 1% with official accreditation. Without Roche and the cobas c 111 analyzer, I don t think we would be as far along the road to accreditation as we are. Dr Chandarana knows that the next twenty years will see just as many changes, if not more, than the last twenty, but he has every confidence that the Pooja will be able to cope with the challenges that the future brings. The cobas c 111 analyzer will no doubt continue to be a great asset to our laboratory as we look ahead. These are exciting times in India and we are determined to stay at the forefront of diagnostic service provision.
Pooja Diagnostic Laboratory Mulund, Mumbai, India
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